Sams Teach Yourself ADO.NET in 21 Days

ADO.NET refers to a set of classes that ship with Visual Studio .NET that allow developers to access data typically stored in relational databases. The purpose of this book is to explain the important features of ADO.NET to corporate developers who use VS .NET. Dan Fox also provides architectural guidance and Best Practices for using ADO.NET in corporate applications. Reference Tables sho how members of ADO.NET classes fit into the bigger picture by denoting why or where the method or property is used. This book is filled with code snippets and code listings in both VB .NET and VC# .NET, sidebars, and mini Case Studies that briefly explore peripheral issues, tips, cautions, and additional resources.

User review
Too much of one type of information
There is a lot of DETAILED info in this book on ADO.NET. However, if you want to do something (write a data entry screen with validation etc.), there is very little here.

This book would be much better suited as a reference on ADO.NET - very little info on how to actually use it in an application.

User review
Succeeded where two others failed
Over the last 18 months I had read 7 or 8 VB.net and .net books, with two supposidly focused only on .net database and ADO.net. While they gave me an understanding of the purpose of ADO.net's architecture, and one brought me thru the wizzards (for which a seperate book was hardly necessary). Neither of these books left me with an understanding of what was really going on, or how I could actually develop ADO.net applications without wizzards.

ADO.net in 21 days was the answer to really understanding the details of how the dataset works inside, how the dataset and all ADO.net relates to XML, Adapter details, and much much more.

I give 5 stars to the book, yet subtract 1 since the samples all require SQL server, I would have appreciated having the samples in Access as well.

I consider myself an intermediate VB programmer. I have worked in my spare time for close to a year, developing a database intensive, moderately complex VB.net application as a volunteer. My agenda is to build a useful product for an organization while keeping my skills up to date -- I have been programming in a variety of languages since 1966. I was especially interested in using ADO.net to make sure what I develop now will have the longest life possible.